First up, in the spirit of inclusion and community-building that we’ve been hyping up since we first announced this thing, we’ve opened up our ballots to include write-in fields in every category. Now, in addition to our seven suggested nominees in each of the ballot’s 51 honors categories, you can feel free to write in an additional candidate that you think is also deserving of recognition. (Frankly, this decision is as much a concession to our having missed some qualified nominees in building this ballot as it is an admission that our editorial staff, which put this ballot together, is by no means the sole determining factor in whether someone is worthy of being honored among their peers.)

Secondly, we have worked with the developers of our polling software to remove the requirement that forced voters to submit an answer in every category in order for their ballots to be accepted. We never intended for that to be the case, and are excited to have it changed. It’s not fair to expect every voter in our Music Honors to be intimately familiar with all 293 acts nominated on the ballot, and we don’t want to discourage someone who has an opinion on, say, the Best Country Act category from participating in this process simply because they don’t have an opinion on the Best Club DJ honors. We also don’t want them just picking an answer at random to satisfy the submission requirements. This change, we believe, opens the process up to a far greater pool of perspectives on the Dallas music scene.

Lastly, we’ve added a page into our system that confirms to voters that their completed ballot has been received. This is a small, but important, change. Previously, voters just had to act in good faith that our system had received their entry when their page refreshed (which we can say for a fact it was even thought it didn’t explicitly say so); now, they’ll be taken to a page that outwardly verifies that their ballot has been entered into our system.

It’s possible we could make additional changes to the ballot in the future, but our hope is that these changes address the most pressing concerns surrounding our voting process. We appreciate your patience and understanding in bringing them to pass.

Pete is the founder, editor and president of Central Track. He is the former music editor of the Dallas Observer. His work has been published in The Daily Beast, Deadspin, LA Weekly, Village Voice, Spin Magazine, The Miami Herald and The Toronto Star, among other major publications. The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies has honored his long-form narrative writing and his blogging efforts alike. In 2009, NBCDFW.com named him one of the 25 Most Interesting People in DFW, a fact he remains all too eager to bring up at dinner parties.